


most-wanted in gotham (spoiled your fun)

by therjolras



Category: Batman (Comics), Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020), DC Extended Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Large Blocks of Dialogue, Spoilers for Birds Of Prey (2020), no editing we die(?) like black mask, rating for language and references to violence, timsteph but only kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23778727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therjolras/pseuds/therjolras
Summary: an epilogue to a different Birds of Prey, in which the diamond thief tells her maybe-boyfriend about her very long day.
Relationships: Stephanie Brown/Tim Drake
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	most-wanted in gotham (spoiled your fun)

**Author's Note:**

> This is the result of a few things:  
> \- my desire to write a lot of things about a DCEU gotham  
> -my frustration at the Birds of Prey we got  
> -a couple of pretty good film theory essays re: BoP as it was  
> -a plot bunny that was literally just Steph v the women, floating around in my head  
> -a sick day with nothing for me to do but actually Write Something  
> -a desire to have Steph somehow kick Black Mask's ass (look. SYMBOLISM. if you're writing steph into a story that has black mask in it, the result must be either angsty or cathartic. I wanted cathartic.)
> 
> this is basically just steph being amazing, a word dump, and timsteph being cute. if you like any of those, hopefully you're in the right place. enjoy!

After the whole shitstorm is over, and Romna Sionis is (probably) dead, the girls reconvene. They get margaritas at Harley’s favorite late-night taqueria and everyone talks shit and everyone but Steph gets tipsy until Steph’s gut finally gives up the diamond. Then Harley just takes the hell off with it, stealing Dinah’s convertible in the process--

“--of course she would,” Renee sighs--

And Steph finally pipes up, “right, now that that’s over, can I borrow someone’s phone? Mine is still impounded.”

All three remaining women turn to look at her.

“Didn’t you literally  _ just  _ lose the half-mil bounty on your head?” Renee says. “And now you want to make phone calls?”

“Uh, yeah, cause I’m not spending the rest of my life in a late-night taqueria,” Steph shoots back. “I just want to call a friend to pick me up. It’s over, the diamond’s out of me, the bad guy’s outta commission. We can all go home.”

“I don’t--” Helena begins.

“Shush, not my point,” Steph says. “Can I borrow a phone, or should I go inside and bum one off the staff?”

Dinah shrugs and pulls a phone out of her pocket. “You sure you’re gonna be safe where you’re calling, kid?”

“Oh, easy,” Steph says. “Safest place I know. Gimme.” Dinah considers a moment longer and then hands her the phone. Steph dials from memory, preemptively cursing Tim out for never answering his phone.

He picks up within two rings. “Drake.”

“It’s me, I’m safe,” Steph says, and a burst of air hits the receiver like Tim let out a breath. “Yes, I know, I shit you not it’s been  _ insane,  _ it’s a long story, can you come and pick me up? I’m at the taqueria on 25th street near North Alan.”

Tim makes a longsuffering noise, and adds, “I’ve already got you pinged. Be there in fifteen. Oracle’s tracking this signal while I’m gone.”

“You’re my second favorite hero,” Steph sing-songs. “See you soon.” She considers saying something to Oracle, and then decides against it-- Oracle’s still mostly a secret, anyway. She’s pretty sure not even  _ Batman  _ knows about Oracle-- not that Batman knows much of anything, these days. He didn’t even come out to play when Black Mask put out an APB against a seventeen-year-old girl-- how much could he possibly be paying attention?

Tim, not being privy to her internal monologue, just snorts and hangs up. Steph gives the phone back to Dinah. “Thanks. My ride’ll be here soon.”

“You sure you’ll be alright, Stephanie?” Renee asks. Steph snorts and slides back into one of the hard plastic booths.

“Now that some fuckin’ diamond’s not jankin’ up my digestive tract?” She says. “ _ More  _ than alright. I’m feelin’ more kick-ass already.”

Helena drinks to that, which makes Steph grin. The margaritas go around again-- Steph manages a swig of Harley’s abandoned glass before Renee confiscates it-- and before too long Steph hears the soft rumble of Tim’s Porsche pulling up to the curb. She hops up, giving a wave to the women still in the booth, and Dinah whistles when she sees the car.

“You sure this is your ride? We ain’t sending you off with some sugar daddy, are we?”

Steph laughs and doesn’t reply. “Renee, if you could get my shit out of impound sometime, that would be great-- I want my board back! We’ll call you, we’ve got Dinah’s number, stay frosty!” She skips down to the curb and throws herself into the car. It’s back in motion before she can get her seat belt on.

“Good to see you, too,” she says. Tim, focused on the road, just sighs.

“Roman Sionis, Steph,” he says. “ _ Roman Sionis. _ ”

“Don’t remind me,” Steph grumbles. “Guy was an asshat.”

“An  _ asshat?  _ Steph, the guy’s a  _ mob boss.  _ He cuts people’s  _ faces off  _ for  _ shits and giggles. _ ” Tim yanks the wheel around a turn and Steph bumps into the door.

“Admit it,” she says, pushing herself upright and grabbing the ceiling handle. “You’re just happy to see me.”

Tim stops at a light. They jolt, but not much, because this car is too expensive for that. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m really happy to see you alive.” He turns to look at her. “You gave Oracle and I both a real damn heart attack. Half a mil? What the hell were you doing?”

“Mostly, trying to stay alive and not strangle Harley Quinn in her sleep,” Steph sighs. “Can it please wait? I’d love to spend ten minutes relaxing in your very nice car before I have to drudge through a day’s worth of bullshit.”

“...Okay,” Tim says. “How’s your wrist?” 

“Doing fine, I’ve been taking very good care of it,” Steph says. “How’ve you been? Doing anything interesting aside from panicking about your girlfriend with the half-mil bounty?”

Tim rolls his eyes at the girlfriend jab. “O and I were upgrading surveillance networks. I’m still trying to get Project Truce off the ground, but… you know.”

“I know,” Steph says. “Fronting a city-wide program means sacrificing your anonymity and all that shit. At some point it’ll be worth it.”

“There’s just so much else that needs done,” Tim sighs. “And not enough people to do it.” 

Steph thinks about four very crazy women squaring off against the Black Mask gang and agrees. Had it not been for a handy-dandy Dinah ex Machina, they would’ve all been dead. 

“Good news, if it works out, I know some people who could be helpful,” she says. “I’ll put a report together or something and you can send it to Oracle. They might be able to do something with those chicks.”

“Chicks? Like Harley?”

“Pfft,  _ that  _ bitch is crazier than twelve stoned monkeys,” Steph says. “The other ones. A detective from the GCPD, a Black Mask traitor-- oh, and holy shit Tim get this, the crossbow killer. Helena  _ Bertinelli. _ ”

Tim blinks. “She finally showed up?”

“You  _ knew?” _

Tim shrugs. The car turns onto the bridge into Midtown. “Look, when the list of enforcers who gunned down the Bertinellis starts turning up murdered, and all the records from the massacre are hand-wavey about the number of bodies turned up, conclusions can be drawn. It was really her?”

“In the angry, angry flesh. She was actually pretty cool.”

“Noted.” Tim smiles, the corner of his mouth tilting like he’s not realizing he found that funny. Steph thinks about pointing that out, but then her tummy makes a noise that reminds her  _ oh, hey, haven’t wanted to eat anything in like nineteen hours.  _

“Can we get takeout?” She says. 

“...you were at a taqueria.”

“With four chicks drinking margaritas and an extreme reluctance to put anything in my body.”

Tim snorts. “Your eggos are still in the freezer.”

“That’ll work too.” Steph settles against the seat again as the car sails through the Upper East Side. Away from the women, without a diamond in her stomach and without a bounty breathing down her neck, she’s starting to feel the adrenaline seeping out of her. It feels like she’s been going nonstop since she woke up in Harley’s stolen minivan; finally, it seems to be catching up.

She manages to stay awake just long enough to jostle back to reality when Tim pulls into his building’s parking garage and shuts off the motor. It feels like a bitch and a half to climb out of the car and slump into the elevator; the ride up to the top is almost long enough to get her dozing again. It winds up just shy, and Steph drags herself out and across Tim’s apartment, falling face down on the sofa when she reaches it. It welcomes her into its embrace.

“Holy  _ shit  _ I am so tired,” she grumbles. As an afterthought she kicks off her sneakers and hears them thump onto the carpet. “Tim. Interrogate me before I pass out for three days.”

“That sounds like a threat.” Tim passes by and sets a water bottle on the floor by her head, and then lands on the floor by the coffee table. “Okay. Start talking. I’ve got a recorder running so neither of us have to get up to write things down.”

“Shiny,” Steph mumbles, and rolls over onto her back so the recording can actually hear her. “Okay. Uh. So, I’ve been gone for, what, two days? Day n’a half? What time is it?”

“Er… four am.”

“Okay, so this probably started… yesterday morning. I was working on a tag a few blocks east of the clocktower, and I was not in costume because it’s a shitty idea to do shit like that with a gimp wrist. I promised you I wouldn’t do that til it came off and I was standing by that.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. I wasn’t in costume, but I was wearing a mask coz only idiots tag without one. It was about eleven when I heard alarms go off about half a block away. I dropped my gear and popped out to check the situation-- if I needed to run, I needed to know-- and Victor Fucking Zsasz was coming towards me in a dead run.”

Tim straightened up. “What.”

“So anyway, I started blasting--”

“ _ Steph. _ ”

“Look, I wasn’t in costume, but if I had an option to give a fucking  _ serial killer  _ a hard time I’d take it any day. I couldn’t do a lot, but I already heard sirens, so I pulled a couple cans out, set ‘em off in his face, and tackled him. I had enough of a jump on him that I could get in a couple good hits and get out, and by the time I’d gotten that far the sirens were, like, right on top of us. He tried to get away, I tackled him, and he dropped this lil baggie with something in it? So I grabbed it and before he could do much about it he had to book it. I riffed through the stuff and it was just a jewel box with a fairly big diamond in it, so I tossed everything but the diamond. So then I’ve got a diamond and no Mr. Zsasz, and then the cops come up on me. They don’t have him, either, but they’ve got me with obvious tagging paraphernalia, so they figure they’ll cut their losses and make a quick arrest. We both know not to trust cops with important stuff any more than we trust serial killers, no offense Commish Thank-Fuck-He’s-Still-Alive, so I figure I’ll have to hide it. And in the back of a patrol car with no gear on me, I don’t have a lot of options. So I, uh. I swallowed the diamond.”

“...I can give you props for quick thinking.”

“Thank you. Means a lot. So, I have a diamond in my stomach. I get questioned about the tagging, someone recognizes me as related to That Asshole so that’ll be unfun later, anyway. I get moved to the cells, by myself coz all the other cells are full of grown-up criminals. And I’m there about… maybe an hour, before Harley Fucking Quinn shows up and turns the entire precinct into her personal playground. So I assume, coz she came into the holding cells with a  _ massive  _ rifle firing glitter bombs. Also for all the fact that she’s apparently a genius, she can’t make head or tail of a control panel, coz she just beat the shit out of one and managed to open the entire pen.”

“How many perps in there?”

“Musta been eight or nine. I just ducked down in my cell until Quinn was dealing with em, and then ran the other way. Figured I wanted to stay out of her way.

“... that didn’t go very well, coz no sooner was I out and running through the evidence room than I got attacked by some other thugs. Unfun. Lots and lots of thugs. I was one arm down and starting to feel queasy from swallowing a rock, so I was just doing my best to g-t-f-o and avoid getting pummeled. Next thing I know, Harley-effin-Quinn grabs me and says somethin’ like, ‘come with me if you want to live’, which, the  _ hell, _ but then a bunch of thugs are pointing guns at us. Harley’s not pointing a gun at me yet, which I consider an up, so I help her pummel the way out. I was planning to just get the hell out once the way was clear, but she must’ve realized that, coz she knocked me out.”

Tim says, “Rude.”

“I know, right? I woke up in a random fuckin’ minivan-- apparently she stole it from evidence-- and that’s when she told me that I stole a diamond that was supposed to go to Roman Fuckin’ Sionis and now he’d put a half-mil bounty out, deliverable to whoever brought him my body. Dead or alive. The fuck. You know that part--”

“--damn right I do--”

“--and that was about twelve-thirty yesterday. At that point, Harley demands the diamond and I have to tell her that it’s in my digestive tract, which understandably pisses her off, but amazingly the first thing she does is  _ not  _ pull over and cut me open. Instead, she says she’ll let me go as soon as I shit the thing out, or she can cut it out of me. Neither option sounds ideal-- fuck knows that if Roman Fucking Sionis wants something I won’t be the one to give it to him-- but I also don’t want to be cut open, so I figure I’ll play it by ear. Harley dragged me back to her pad at that point, doped me up on pepto, and we just… chilled for a couple of hours. It was… very weird. Does it make sense to you that she really,  _ really  _ likes Loony Tunes?”

“That makes  _ too much  _ sense,” Tim sighs. “It’s just her style of random cartoon bullshit.”

“Oh, good. I feel better. It was pissing me off, how much sense it made. So we watched Loony Tunes and we bickered about crime and the moral ramifications of feeding corrupt traffickers to pet hyenas. This is hysterical, she had a  _ pet hyena  _ in her  _ bathtub.  _ I shit you not, she said, ‘I named him Bruce, after that hunky Wayne boy.’”

Tim snorts at that.

Steph goes on, “Then her landlord sold her out to the next pack of thugs to come knocking, who, like, fired a rocket at the apartment, and Harley turned pansy and called Black Mask and said she had me. She arranged to meet at Amusement Mile to drop me off-- of course--”

“Fucking clown brand.”

“Right? So she drove me down there and hunkered down in one of her apparent HQs? It was a very shitty HQ. She duck-taped me to a toilet. Very fucked up. And  _ here  _ is where the story gets noticeably more convoluted, so hold on for this: While I’m duck-taped to a toilet, one of the cops from the precinct shows up and confronts Harley. Harley throws her out a window.  _ Then  _ Victor Fucking Zsasz shows up with some other chick, knocks Harley out, and finds me. They realize what’s going on pretty fast-- helpful, coz I had ducktape on my mouth and I wouldn’t have said shit to them anyway-- and  _ then  _ Victor Fucking Zsasz realizes the most rational course of action. Of course, instead of doing it himself, the asshole hands the knife to this woman he’s with-- and dig this, this woman  _ lives in my building,  _ apparently she’s an enforcer for the Black Mask, the hell? But apparently she recognized me. This is relevant later. Point being, she refuses to gut me, and Zsasz then starts yelling at her about being a traitor, and while they’re bitching I grab the knife she was using to cut the duck-tape off. While we’re all doing  _ that,  _ Helena Bertinelli shows up and shoots Zsasz.”

“You were right about convoluted.”

“You’re telling me. After  _ that,  _ the cop shows up again, and I pull up my britches and grab Zsasz’s gun and tell them all off. I was, at that point, understandably pissed. Also at this point, I learned a very short list of all the shit that had gone down to make this a reality. It was very convoluted and messy but apparently the woman who works for Black Mask and lives in my building snitches to the cop lady, and when Sionis sent her with Zsasz to get me, she snitched. Zsasz realized she was a snitch, tried to kill her, cop lady showed up, they tangled, but Zsasz also contributed to the Bertinelli murders so Helena followed him and shot him. What she  _ didn’t  _ know was that Sionis orchestrated the murders? Apparently? So her last and biggest beef should be with him. The cop lady-- Montoya-- said this. 

“Anyway, apparently Zsasz snitched on the snitch to Sionis, so at this point we looked out the window and realized he’d amassed a small gang army on Amusement Mile grounds, rendering us all fucked for various reasons. The good news was, aside from me being pretty constipated at this point, we could all hold our own in a tangle, so we figured we could fight our way out. I was in the back for most of it-- again, mostly useless-- so I did get to watch them all be generally badass, but there really was a lot of thugs. We were almost all the way out when we got stuck in a bottleneck. At this point we would most definitely have been dead by Many Many Guns, but the snitch-- Dinah-- is apparently a Meta, coz at this point she got up and screamed so loud it knocked everyone out.

“I would have been impressed, but at some point in the mess Sionis’s thugs got me and dragged me off. Shoved me in a car with Masky himself and yeeted outta there. And-- uh-- lemme tell you-- if you can at all avoid it, would advise to Never Ever wind up alone in a vehicle with Black Mask. Guy was freaky as hell.” She pauses and tries to shake off the thoughts of, like, the mask and the gun and his hands pinning her arms to her sides, a weight right over her cast, like he could push down and break it again if he felt like it. Sadist. “Helena and Harley apparently teamed up to chase after me, but I didn’t see anything but Harley roller skating up to the car and harassing it long enough that the driver drove into a fence. He died. Sionis dragged me out onto the pier-- and I’m still baffled as to why, was it for drama? Psychological warfare? Does he realize she’s probably better at that than he is? And Harley followed. He gloated at her through the fog about her being useless without a Big Strong Man to give her purpose, and then she shot him. Well, knowing he wouldn’t just grab me and kill me, I threw him off me and then Harley shot him. He fell off the pier. We got the hell out of there after that, rounded up at the taqueria, I shat out the diamond, and Harley took off with it.”

“So now Harley Quinn has a diamond,” Tim sighs. “And I bet I know which one.”

“Which diamond, then, genius boy?” Steph rolls over onto her side to look at him, and finds that over the course of her story he’s laid back on the floor and is looking up at a bunch of files and other data projected onto the ceiling. One of the projections is of a running audio feed-- the recording?

“The Bertinelli diamond,” Tim says, and the audio feed fluctuates, so Steph was  _ right.  _ Ha. “It’s been hiding for longer than the Bertinellis have been dead,” Tim goes on. “Something tells me that Helena looked into it when she came back to the city, and word got back to Roman. It’s the last of their family heirlooms, but it’s also rumored to be a gold-mine of information. Dirt against other crime families, mostly. It probably had enough information encoded in it to give Sionis leverage against every other Boss in the city.”

The ominous nature of that statement hangs in the air between them.

“The good news,” Steph says after a moment, “is that it’s now with Harley Quinn. And she may be freakishly smart, but she’s also absolutely fucking insane.”

“That’ll reassure me for now,” Tim says. “I should probably tip Batman off to it. Or maybe Helena herself, if she doesn’t already know. Did you say Oracle might like them? I’ll tell Oracle. They could use a few more boots on the ground. Did anyone but Harley seem like a help-people type?”

“Montoya, yeah. She seemed like one of those cops who’s been aggressively Not Corrupt for long enough that it’s starting to wear her down. She was really determined to make… everything work. Dinah seemed like she’d been playing apathy to survive, but could be persuaded to do good. She put in a lot of effort to keep everyone safe. Helena… She seemed to like the idea of justice and protecting people.”

“Good. I’ll forward the report to Oracle and see if they can do anything with it. Can you repeat the names of the people you met?

“Uh, yeah,” Steph says. “Harleen Quinzel, aka Harley Quinn. Detective Renee Montoya. Dinah Lance. The Crossbow Killer aka Huntress aka Helena Bertinelli.”

“Awesome.” Tim grunted and sat up. “End recording.” He pointed to the couch. “Can I--?”

“By all means,” Steph said, and sat up. Tim crossed over, sat on the couch, and gave her a hug. He squeezed rather tight.

“I am very,  _ very  _ relieved that you’re safe,” he says. “Especially knowing everything else that happened. You officially have a crazier story than me to tell at parties.”

“I’m honored.” Steph giggles and rests her head on Tim’s shoulder. “I am also very relieved to be done with that shitshow.”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“Maybe a little. You talk like an automaton and it’s very cute.”

“Gee, thanks.” They both laugh. “I’ve been trying to track you all night,” Tim admits. “Harley must be really good at covering her tracks. It was driving me crazy that I couldn’t find you.”

“Well, at least I know I drive you crazy now,” Steph mumbles, and he pinches her for that. “Ouch.”

“Fair retribution for being mean,” he says. Then, “do you still want to eat something?”

“Holy shit,  _ yes,”  _ Steph says. “I take it back. You’re my favorite hero.” That gets another laugh out of Tim as he lets her go and kisses the top of her head before heading towards the kitchen. “Get yourself a waffle too, you’ve earned it,” she calls after him. “Like, six times over.” She flops back onto the couch, looking up at the ceiling.

She wouldn’t call it a good day, not by a long shot. But interesting? Definitely.

She desperately hoped the nightmares wouldn’t be too bad after this.

**Author's Note:**

> I really hope that some day I get around to writing the companion piece in which Tim Drake kicks batman's ass and becomes robin. I really am fond of what exists of it in my head, but it's waaaay longer than I have mental bandwidth for. until then, enjoy all the easter eggs I gave myself in writing this! RIP
> 
> (if you made it this far, thanks so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! ^^)


End file.
